Witnesses share personal stories of healing

Published: Thursday, June 13, 2013 at 06:15 PM.

Pat Cheshire of Gastonia, a member of the Together in Christ Chapter of the International Order of St. Luke, didn't want to believe that he had the gift of healing.

“It happened by accident,” Cheshire said. “Ten to 12 years ago, I was a spiritual director on a Cursillo Weekend (for spiritual enrichment). I had never done healing prayer, but they asked me to do it. I tried to duck the service, sat in the back pew, but they wouldn’t start the healing part until I took my place.”

Afterward the people who came to him for prayer told him that if he was looking for a ministry, he had found it.

“I ran from it because I thought only crazy people prayed for healing,” Cheshire said.

He talked to a priest and attended a school at Christian Healing Ministries in Florida. He was one of the founding members of the Together in Christ Chapter of the International Order of St. Luke in Gastonia.

He knows people who have been healed physically, but the most important healing is spiritual, he said.

“If we can open our hearts and lives to Jesus, that’s where we have our spiritual healing,” Cheshire said. “If we can truly own God in our hearts and lives than nothing else matters. We’re human, sometimes we will sink into depression and we ask, ‘What can God do with me?’ God can do amazing things with anybody he chooses as long as we open our lives to him. He's never early; he’s never late; he’s always on time."

The lame walk; the blind see; the sick are healed. Ordinary people are experiencing extraordinary events by being available, said The Very Rev. Dr. Valori Mulvey Sherer , rector of the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Shelby.

“We are instruments of God ... God’s hands and feet in the world,” Sherer said.

Skeptics can dismiss the miracle or explain it away, but Sherer said, “Everything that happens is God at work. Everything we face is an opportunity to experience God's redeeming love.”

Sherer shares her story of healing along with others from Cleveland, Rutherford and Gaston counties.

‘I was healed by God’ - The Very Rev. Dr. Valori Mulvey Sherer

Sherer realized she had the gift of healing after experiencing her own miracle.

“I was 41 and they found a mass in me,” Sherer said. “My grandmother died at 41 of cancer. I went to my friends and I said I want you to lay hands on me and pray for me and I'm going to listen to what it’s telling me and let it go.”

When she went back to the doctor, the mass was gone.

“He said, “I have no medical explanation for what happened. What do you think?’” Sherer said. “And I said, ‘I think I was healed by God.’”

Sherer said that God uses physical ailments to speak to his people.

“We are created body, mind and spirit,” she said. “We communicate with God and he communicates with us. What I heard was the mass felt like a pocket of stored up anger, so I went through everything that I had been angry about.”

When she prays for people, she listens to what the spirit is saying.

“I will hear what that means,” she said. “I will offer them the opportunity to listen to what the message is from the body. You have to be open to God’s power working in you. Your healing may come through your changing.”

‘God is able’ - Bishop Michael Moore

Bishop Michael Moore of Webb First Baptist Church in Ellenboro starts his day with an hour of prayer. He lies with his face to the ground, stretched out on a blanket before God, because his knees ache when he kneels.

“I will pray in the spirit,” Moore said. “I pray for my family and the church. God will put somebody’s name in my spirit and I stay locked in on them until the spirit gives me relief.”

He said while he was praying recently, God told him to cut the prayer blanket into squares and give the prayer cloths to people.

“It’s not the cloth, it’s the power of God,” he said. “In Mark Chapter 5, the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment was healed.”

In the 22 years that Moore has faithfully prayed every morning he’s witnessed miracles in his own life and the lives of his church members. He has served as pastor of Webb First Baptist for 17 years.

“I’ve made prayer my main thing,” he said. “I’m too blessed to be stressed; too anointed to be disappointed, too equipped to be whipped, too powerful to be pitiful.”

Through prayer, church members and others have been healed of cancer, drug addiction, stroke, blindness and a coma.

“God is able if you will trust him,” Moore said.

Sometimes trusting him means waiting on a miracle that doesn’t come, he said. He’s prayed for his sister, who has fibromyalgia, but she has not been cured.

“God does things in his time,” he said. “Adversity builds character. Whatever I’m going through in life makes me better.”

‘It happened by accident’ - Pat Cheshire

Pat Cheshire of Gastonia, a member of the Together in Christ Chapter of the International Order of St. Luke, didn't want to believe that he had the gift of healing.

“It happened by accident,” Cheshire said. “Ten to 12 years ago, I was a spiritual director on a Cursillo Weekend (for spiritual enrichment). I had never done healing prayer, but they asked me to do it. I tried to duck the service, sat in the back pew, but they wouldn’t start the healing part until I took my place.”

Afterward the people who came to him for prayer told him that if he was looking for a ministry, he had found it.

“I ran from it because I thought only crazy people prayed for healing,” Cheshire said.

He talked to a priest and attended a school at Christian Healing Ministries in Florida. He was one of the founding members of the Together in Christ Chapter of the International Order of St. Luke in Gastonia.

He knows people who have been healed physically, but the most important healing is spiritual, he said.

“If we can open our hearts and lives to Jesus, that’s where we have our spiritual healing,” Cheshire said. “If we can truly own God in our hearts and lives than nothing else matters. We’re human, sometimes we will sink into depression and we ask, ‘What can God do with me?’ God can do amazing things with anybody he chooses as long as we open our lives to him. He's never early; he’s never late; he’s always on time."

‘By Jesus’ stripes, you are healed’ - Charles Helms

Charles Helms has been part of the healing team at Christ The King Church, 1311 S. Lafayette St., Shelby, for 10 years.

On Thursday evenings, the team meets at the church to teach about healing and pray for people.

“People have been healed emotionally, spiritually and physically,” he said.

His wife, Vivian, was healed of severe back pain. When she came to the healing room, she could hardly stand up.

“I went to a chiropractor three times and it didn’t lessen the pain,” she said. “I came to the healing rooms. They laid hands on me and prayed for me. We started worshipping the Lord. All of a sudden the power of God hit my leg and it felt like the pain left my body. God healed me and the pain left. I jumped up and ran around the room.”

Another church member had a heart attack and was rushed to Charlotte. Doctors told him that the bottom of his heart was no longer functioning, Charles Helms said. A month later, the man was having trouble breathing and was rushed back to the hospital.

“From the time he had the heart attack until he went back to the hospital, he told everybody that God was healing him,” Charles Helms said. “The doctors came in his room and told him they didn’t understand it, but his heart was functioning properly now. He is always telling everybody what God is doing for him.”

Helms said God gives promises in the Bible, and he paraphases 1 Peter 2:24: “By Jesus' stripes you are healed.”

“Every stripe that Jesus took is healing for you,” he said.”"He became a substitute for you and me. He takes anybody's sickness or disease and it goes back to the cross. He gave his blood for us – his life for us – that's precious, royal blood.”

Another Bible verse Charles Helms likes to quote is 1 Peter 5:7 – “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”

“Jesus said, ‘Let me have that worry and that thing that is bothering you,’” Charles Helms said. “He is willing to take the problems you can't figure out and take care of them for you.”

Not everyone they pray for receives healing.

“Those are mysteries we will never know until we get to heaven,” he said. “There are things every family goes through for no reason. Keep faith in God – hold to the scriptures.”